Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

[FCLB]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

A lawyer writes, not that it makes what I have to say conclusive or anything. Anyway, fow ahet it's worth, I suspect that City's argument here is fairly simple. If Helan has breached his contract with Rennes, that doesn't automatically mean City have broken the rules. We've only contravened the rules if Helan's breach of contract was induced by City, and I'm guessing that, while City consider that he wasn't validly under contract to Rennes, we also claim that, if he actually was and breached that contract, we didn't induce the breach.

It has been reported that when United came calling for Helan, they were put off by the fact that he was under contract to Rennes. However, by the time City showed an interest, he was already in dispute with them over the validity of his contract. One presumes that he's arguing that he can't be obliged to sign a professional contract at 17 on the basis of a pre-contract signed when he was only 13. The French authorities have ruled that Rennes have right on their side under the rules as they stand, but it would appear, as far as we can judge from what is said in the media, that Helan believes those rules to infringe French labour law.

(I'd argue that, if the latter does actually permit a 13-year-old to make a binding long term career commitment, that is an absolutely astonishing state of affairs in a leading developed western economy. However, my view on that isn't relevant to the legal argument!).

Now, a couple of assumptions. It seems that Helan, after Rennes rejected the advances from United, may well have sought legal advice to see if (with a view to getting a more lucrative contract than he could at Rennes) he could get out of an arrangement he'd signed up to when he was too young to know better. And it would be entirely unsurprising if the player, when, on the basis of the advice he'd presumably obtained, taking legal action to have the contract declared void, had informed Rennes that he regarded the contract as void so was refusing to be bound by it.

If it subsequently transpires that there was no valid contract between Helan and Rennes, then there's no issue anyway. But if there was a binding contract then, if the above assumptions are correct, Helan was in breach of it at the point he told Rennes that he didn't recognise it and wouldn't abide by it - i.e. before City came calling. QED, City cannot have induced a breach which took place before we had any contact with the player.

Presumably, we'll be able to show that Helan told us he was a free agent when we signed him, and our own professional advice suggested this to be true, notwithstanding any protestations to the contrary from Rennes. We therefore acted in good faith, and if we chose to regard any representations from Rennes as an opportunistic attempt to grab a few quid by a smaller club which was aware of our wealth, then that, surely, is a perfectly understandable position to have taken in the circumstances.

If our advice, and Helan's description of the position to us when we were negotiating his transfer, proves to be wrong, then of course there'll be consequences. For instance, presumably we'll either have to release the player or pay Rennes compensation for their loss of a player who was under contract. But if the analysis that we didn't induce the breach is correct, then I don't see how we can be punished.

Finally, one more interesting point. I see from a report quoted above that the French Football Federation contacted the FA to say that it issued the ITC in error. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Helan been playing for City representative sides since he came to us? Which implies that he must be registered as our player. So does this mean that the FA, having registered Helan to City, must, in refusing to take any action to rescind the registration, be casting doubt on what the FFF and/or Rennes is saying?

Hélan believed anything. Hélan has no law background to lead him to developp such a point of view. He tried to wrestle his way out of a legally binding contract.
Hélan appealed to two different courts before appealing to the Labour court. Both times, his complaint was rejected.

Notice that once his complaint is repelled by the Labour Court, he still can go to the European Human rights court to try to defend his case.

It will be pretty hard for Manchester City to act the way it is suggested since they were warned over the case. The story is that Manchester United tried their luck on this player but backed down when they felt the wind turning against them.
City overode the same warnings by choice. Poor legal advice does not save from justicial consequences. Quick example: many webmasters, with legal advice, were told that putting up links towards hacked material is not a breach on copyright laws. Their legal advice interpretated the laws in such ways. Now webmasters have been sued and convicted.
The standard position would have been in City's case to wait for Hélan's case to be dealt before the courts and sign the player when he is clear.
City gambled.

My take is that City might escape punishment, not because they did not disregard law and think they could get away with it but because an english club in the net is already enough (or even one too many) for FIFA.

 

[Marvin]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

Now I may be being stupid here. But if it is not legal to sign a contract at 13. How is signing a "pre-contract" any more legal when a pre-contract leads on, automatically into a contract. Surely therefore, they are one and the same?

Would be grateful if someone could answer that one too

Edit: perhaps the restriction os signing contracts before the age of 17 does not apply in france?

 

[SWP's back]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

Now I may be being stupid here. But if it is not legal to sign a contract at 13. How is signing a "pre-contract" any more legal when a pre-contract leads on, automatically into a contract. Surely therefore, they are one and the same?

Would be grateful if someone could answer that one too

Edit: perhaps the restriction os signing contracts before the age of 17 does not apply in france?

But then he wouldn't have had to sign a pre-contract surely and would have just signed a contract.

Ermmmm - lawyers? barristers? brickies? anyone????

 

[Dyed Petya]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

Hélan believed anything. Hélan has no law background to lead him to developp such a point of view. He tried to wrestle his way out of a legally binding contract.
Hélan appealed to two different courts before appealing to the Labour court. Both times, his complaint was rejected.

Notice that once his complaint is repelled by the Labour Court, he still can go to the European Human rights court to try to defend his case.

It will be pretty hard for Manchester City to act the way it is suggested since they were warned over the case. The story is that Manchester United tried their luck on this player but backed down when they felt the wind turning against them.
City overode the same warnings by choice. Poor legal advice does not save from justicial consequences. Quick example: many webmasters, with legal advice, were told that putting up links towards hacked material is not a breach on copyright laws. Their legal advice interpretated the laws in such ways. Now webmasters have been sued and convicted.
The standard position would have been in City's case to wait for Hélan's case to be dealt before the courts and sign the player when he is clear.
City gambled.

My take is that City might escape punishment, not because they did not disregard law and think they could get away with it but because an english club in the net is already enough (or even one too many) for FIFA.

I don't think you've understood or addressed the arguments raised at all.

 

[Rösler's Dad]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

Would be grateful if someone could answer that one too

Edit: perhaps the restriction os signing contracts before the age of 17 does not apply in france?

But then he wouldn't have had to sign a pre-contract surely and would have just signed a contract.

Ermmmm - lawyers? barristers? brickies? anyone????

My understanding (but I'm not a lawyer) is that an agreement to sign a contract at a future date is legal in France; hence the term Pre-Contract. This is not legal in the UK.

Hence also my belief that Hélan's court case under French employment law is absolutely fundamental and, as a matter of simple natural justice he ought to win. But, like Bosman, it might need to go further.

 

[FCLB]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

I'll try betterh.

A lawyer writes, not that it makes what I have to say conclusive or anything. Anyway, fow ahet it's worth, I suspect that City's argument here is fairly simple. If Helan has breached his contract with Rennes, that doesn't automatically mean City have broken the rules. We've only contravened the rules if Helan's breach of contract was induced by City, and I'm guessing that, while City consider that he wasn't validly under contract to Rennes, we also claim that, if he actually was and breached that contract, we didn't induce the breach.

It has been reported that when United came calling for Helan, they were put off by the fact that he was under contract to Rennes. However, by the time City showed an interest, he was already in dispute with them over the validity of his contract. One presumes that he's arguing that he can't be obliged to sign a professional contract at 17 on the basis of a pre-contract signed when he was only 13. The French authorities have ruled that Rennes have right on their side under the rules as they stand, but it would appear, as far as we can judge from what is said in the media, that Helan believes those rules to infringe French labour law.

Hélan believed nothing. He tried to wrestle his way out of a legally binding contract.

He appealed to two courts. Both rejected. Notice this indicate his legal advice did not seek for support from the french labour court at first but tried their luck before sports courts. If they have doubt on the legal of the contract relatively to french laws, they would have gone first to the French Labour court, a more authoritative institution. Thing is that they thought the sports courts they first appealed to would be more open to their request. They were not.

Another point is that it is not over. Once Hélan is finished with the french court, he can still appeal to the European Human Rights Court.

(I'd argue that, if the latter does actually permit a 13-year-old to make a binding long term career commitment, that is an absolutely astonishing state of affairs in a leading developed western economy. However, my view on that isn't relevant to the legal argument!).

Check West point cadet academy. It is located in the US.

A point that seems to be disregarded. The contract was of course overseen by his parents.

Now, a couple of assumptions. It seems that Helan, after Rennes rejected the advances from United, may well have sought legal advice to see if (with a view to getting a more lucrative contract than he could at Rennes) he could get out of an arrangement he'd signed up to when he was too young to know better. And it would be entirely unsurprising if the player, when, on the basis of the advice he'd presumably obtained, taking legal action to have the contract declared void, had informed Rennes that he regarded the contract as void so was refusing to be bound by it.

If it subsequently transpires that there was no valid contract between Helan and Rennes, then there's no issue anyway. But if there was a binding contract then, if the above assumptions are correct, Helan was in breach of it at the point he told Rennes that he didn't recognise it and wouldn't abide by it - i.e. before City came calling. QED, City cannot have induced a breach which took place before we had any contact with the player.

Presumably, we'll be able to show that Helan told us he was a free agent when we signed him, and our own professional advice suggested this to be true, notwithstanding any protestations to the contrary from Rennes. We therefore acted in good faith, and if we chose to regard any representations from Rennes as an opportunistic attempt to grab a few quid by a smaller club which was aware of our wealth, then that, surely, is a perfectly understandable position to have taken in the circumstances.

The case was not cleared by the French law courts. Therefore no legal advice has ground to suggest an action in good faith. The worsening fact is that United was faced with the same opportunity and turned it down, giving a positive example the opposite choice existed.

If our advice, and Helan's description of the position to us when we were negotiating his transfer, proves to be wrong, then of course there'll be consequences. For instance, presumably we'll either have to release the player or pay Rennes compensation for their loss of a player who was under contract. But if the analysis that we didn't induce the breach is correct, then I don't see how we can be punished.

Fact is that City signed a club who was in dispute with his owner club. His status was unclear. City is the club who provided the exit route to this guy.

Finally, one more interesting point. I see from a report quoted above that the French Football Federation contacted the FA to say that it issued the ITC in error. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Helan been playing for City representative sides since he came to us? Which implies that he must be registered as our player. So does this mean that the FA, having registered Helan to City, must, in refusing to take any action to rescind the registration, be casting doubt on what the FFF and/or Rennes is saying?

Federations are independent from each other. The FA can allow a player to sign in, knowing that he is under contract with a club. All that matters in the case is to know if FIFA/UEFA would receive a complaint from the said club. English clubs and in all likelihood thought that FIFA would not give credit to clubs which saw their youth being poached. It was a gamble.

 

[fbloke]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

Federations are independent from each other. The FA can allow a player to sign in, knowing that he is under contract with a club. All that matters in the case is to know if FIFA/UEFA would receive a complaint from the said club. English clubs and in all likelihood thought that FIFA would not give credit to clubs which saw their youth being poached. It was a gamble.

Therein lies part of my argument.

If Federations are independent and can rule for or against independently then what are UEFA for?

Surely there has to be a standard that has to be adhered to so that all of these 'confusions' can be cleared up.

On a wider point if, after so many years of such confusions why has the power crazed, anti-english UEFA sorted this out - oh hang on there's an imbalance in favour of the french isnt there?

So this is likely to cause a lot of embarrassment for UEFA when the legal proceedings do start, tie that to the upcoming battles with over salary caps, T/O caps and we may well find that Platini is somewhat less important than he currently believes.

 

[lloydie]

Re: Feel ill but a Rag just spoke some sense and I agree!

FCLB, can you please explain how we have induced Helan to break his contract if, as DP pointed out, he had already decided to break it? can you also please respond to my previous questions?

[quote="Watchman
as of 6pm today , they still have not made any complaint to FIFA...if their case was so watertight , then they would have appealed by now?

their president is now saying that United didnt act in the spirit of the law...but no laws were transgressed

The story is simple. So far, Manchester United has breached no rule because Paul Pogba is not yet a Manchester United player. The FFF refused to deliver the ITC document and MU turned to FIFA to get the document.
So no infringement has been yet committed and it is useless to make a complaint.

Le Havre's president waits for the document to be delivered by FIFA and as it is, the procedure will be launched.

In Rennes' case, the document was delivered by mistake and this mistake was made known a week later. It seems to me that a number of people here are fooling themselves if they think it voids the case. Besides, they also discard the very fact that Manchester City was warned over the case several times and prefered to bully its way up to the conclusion. It was a lucky mistake until now.

Think you're probably right regarding people fooling themselves as this will run and run, and I suspect there may be further and severe consequences for us. I would, however, also like to see your evidence of City "bullying" in this instance, or any other for that matter.

It would be nice if you put your cards on the table and state your allegiance, so we may judge your viewpoint accordingly.[/quote]

 

[Dyed Petya]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

I'll try betterh.

A lawyer writes, not that it makes what I have to say conclusive or anything. Anyway, fow ahet it's worth, I suspect that City's argument here is fairly simple. If Helan has breached his contract with Rennes, that doesn't automatically mean City have broken the rules. We've only contravened the rules if Helan's breach of contract was induced by City, and I'm guessing that, while City consider that he wasn't validly under contract to Rennes, we also claim that, if he actually was and breached that contract, we didn't induce the breach.

It has been reported that when United came calling for Helan, they were put off by the fact that he was under contract to Rennes. However, by the time City showed an interest, he was already in dispute with them over the validity of his contract. One presumes that he's arguing that he can't be obliged to sign a professional contract at 17 on the basis of a pre-contract signed when he was only 13. The French authorities have ruled that Rennes have right on their side under the rules as they stand, but it would appear, as far as we can judge from what is said in the media, that Helan believes those rules to infringe French labour law.

Hélan believed nothing. He tried to wrestle his way out of a legally binding contract.

He appealed to two courts. Both rejected. Notice this indicate his legal advice did not seek for support from the french labour court at first but tried their luck before sports courts. If they have doubt on the legal of the contract relatively to french laws, they would have gone first to the French Labour court, a more authoritative institution. Thing is that they thought the sports courts they first appealed to would be more open to their request. They were not.

Another point is that it is not over. Once Hélan is finished with the french court, he can still appeal to the European Human Rights Court.

(I'd argue that, if the latter does actually permit a 13-year-old to make a binding long term career commitment, that is an absolutely astonishing state of affairs in a leading developed western economy. However, my view on that isn't relevant to the legal argument!).

Check West point cadet academy. It is located in the US.

A point that seems to be disregarded. The contract was of course overseen by his parents.

Now, a couple of assumptions. It seems that Helan, after Rennes rejected the advances from United, may well have sought legal advice to see if (with a view to getting a more lucrative contract than he could at Rennes) he could get out of an arrangement he'd signed up to when he was too young to know better. And it would be entirely unsurprising if the player, when, on the basis of the advice he'd presumably obtained, taking legal action to have the contract declared void, had informed Rennes that he regarded the contract as void so was refusing to be bound by it.

If it subsequently transpires that there was no valid contract between Helan and Rennes, then there's no issue anyway. But if there was a binding contract then, if the above assumptions are correct, Helan was in breach of it at the point he told Rennes that he didn't recognise it and wouldn't abide by it - i.e. before City came calling. QED, City cannot have induced a breach which took place before we had any contact with the player.

Presumably, we'll be able to show that Helan told us he was a free agent when we signed him, and our own professional advice suggested this to be true, notwithstanding any protestations to the contrary from Rennes. We therefore acted in good faith, and if we chose to regard any representations from Rennes as an opportunistic attempt to grab a few quid by a smaller club which was aware of our wealth, then that, surely, is a perfectly understandable position to have taken in the circumstances.

The case was not cleared by the French law courts. Therefore no legal advice has ground to suggest an action in good faith. The worsening fact is that United was faced with the same opportunity and turned it down, giving a positive example the opposite choice existed.

If our advice, and Helan's description of the position to us when we were negotiating his transfer, proves to be wrong, then of course there'll be consequences. For instance, presumably we'll either have to release the player or pay Rennes compensation for their loss of a player who was under contract. But if the analysis that we didn't induce the breach is correct, then I don't see how we can be punished.

Fact is that City signed a club who was in dispute with his owner club. His status was unclear. City is the club who provided the exit route to this guy.

Finally, one more interesting point. I see from a report quoted above that the French Football Federation contacted the FA to say that it issued the ITC in error. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Helan been playing for City representative sides since he came to us? Which implies that he must be registered as our player. So does this mean that the FA, having registered Helan to City, must, in refusing to take any action to rescind the registration, be casting doubt on what the FFF and/or Rennes is saying?

Federations are independent from each other. The FA can allow a player to sign in, knowing that he is under contract with a club. All that matters in the case is to know if FIFA/UEFA would receive a complaint from the said club. English clubs and in all likelihood thought that FIFA would not give credit to clubs which saw their youth being poached. It was a gamble.

To repeat. Again. City signed a player in dispute with another club, yes. However, City have only breached the rules if they actually induced the breach. If a contract did exist and if he was in breach of it before City turned up (and neither you nor I knows that for sure, it's all a matter of conjecture, and I recognise that you ), then they didn't induce the breach. Providing an exit route following a breach that has already happened is NOT the same thing as inducing a breach. Doing so may invalidate the signing or entitled Rennes to compensation but should not entail a penalty for inducing a breach.

Secondly, he may have had advice from his parents, learned third parties or even the Lord Almighty when making his career commitment at 13, but the fact is that none of those parties can make a decision for him. It's HIS career, where he pursues it is HIS choice and HE doesn't have the maturity himself to make long term decisions in that direction at that age. End of.

Thirdly, he hasn't actually been to two Courts. He's been to the sports body g9verning his contract and then followed an appeal mechanism. The fact he didn't go to the civil courtsb first doesn't at all signify that he is unsure of his case. Civil litigation is complex, time consuming and expensive, so best avoided. Anyone with any sense at all would try the cheaper and easier routes first, even if they involve appeals to bodies with a vested interest who are likely to allow that interest to cloud their view of the case.

 

[Dubai Blue]

Re: Jérémy Hélan & City (Merged)

Hélan appealed to two different courts before appealing to the Labour court. Both times, his complaint was rejected.

Notice that once his complaint is repelled by the Labour Court, he still can go to the European Human rights court to try to defend his case.

And if the European Court of Human Rights does not throw this nonsense out, I will eat my own arse. What kind of backward, tin-pot country regards a piece of paper signed by a 13-year-old child as legally binding?

The French courts may well back these antiquated, slave-like laws, but City and Helan will push this all the way to the very top and there is NO WAY that an EU court will uphold their rulings.

Surely FIFA can't even consider acting on this until this case between Rennes and Halan is finalized, and that looks like it is going to be years and years away.